The Wolf of Snow Hollow - Series Introduction

That’s exactly it. It’s this earnest, threatening urgency, of people who have a huge amount of testosterone as well as a desire to find justice and do the right thing. I’ve met a lot of law enforcement officials, and their favorite movies—you can ask any of them—are Batman, Superman, and “Fast & Furious” movies. These are people who have an idea in their mind about being protectors, of the thin blue line between order and chaos. That can also be an incredibly dangerous, sociopathic place to live, thinking you’re Rikki-Tikki-Tavi with a pistol. When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. To put in that place type-A people who steamroll others in their normal lives, it creates incredibly toxic workplaces, especially for women. It’s a very strange time to talk about the police. But it’s funny to make slapstick comedies about them. You can do both at the same time: you can humiliate and humanize these people. That’s important. Chaplin did that with “The Great Dictator.” If you can make jokes about this stuff, it gives people ammunition to deal with it in their normal lives.

Jim Cummings, in an interview with Isaac Feldberg at RogerEbert.com

I often write three or four drafts before I even begin trying to edit a piece of writing about a film. I can write as many as six or seven. I do this, because I sometimes don't know exactly what I find interesting or worth writing about related to a film, until I start writing. It always starts with an itch, an inkling that there is something there to write about. Sometimes, I start with some idea, and in the course of writing, find more. I write a draft, then sit down and start from the beginning again, usually because somewhere in the process of the previous draft, I tripped across and idea worth exploring that didn't seem to fit with that previous version. Once I feel I've mined the film for what I might be able to write about, and I think might be interesting to readers, I'll go through the drafts, pick out the things I think are worth keeping, and start assembling them into what becomes a master draft.

After the piece I wrote about Ready or Not, I wasn't sure what to work on next in this loose project of writing about films from the 21st century that have something to say about what we're experiencing right now. A very informal poll where I posted a few options put The Wolf of Snow Hollow at the top, with a whopping three votes. Three readers is better than none, always.

I was in the process of the third draft, parsing different things I was able to pull out of the film, when I came across the CNN article detailing it's investigation into what it called an "online rape academy." It's not an inaccurate assessment, and yet I don't think even those three words in that arrangement convey the horrifying nature of the story. The next day, news broke of the murder of Cerina Fairfax, by the man she had filed to divorce, former Lt. Governor of Virginia, Justin Fairfax. Tributes to Justin trickled out from many who'd worked with him in politics, attended college with him and so on. Mention of Cerina was notably missing from many of them. Her life had been taken by a man who had once attained some prominence, before allegations of sexual harassment and abuse undid his promising political career. The day after that news broke that singer D4vid was arrested in connection with the murder of a 14 year old girl, whose body had been found dismembered and burned in the trunk of his Tesla when it was towed.

Mind you, this was only a few weeks after Congressman Eric Swalwell suspended his campaign for governor of California and tendered his resignation from the House of Representatives. All of this as we collectively wonder why and how more hasn't been done to investigate and prosecute revelations of the victims of Jeffrey Epstein, even after a number of the investigation files detailing or alleging horrid crimes have been released.

I'm not a woman, and that doesn't mean I don't find it deeply dispiriting, disappointing distressing and disgusting that stories like these are still possible. I've certainly been socialized into a share of problematic and harmful norms where gender is concerned, like almost all of us have. I've tried as best I can to find my way to undoing those, with no small degree of failure. It doesn't change the fact that I recognize women as my fellow human beings. It can all be very complicated, but I also think it's pretty simple that the continued particularities and peculiarities of gendered violence are a real life horror. I do often think that I can't actually fathom what it would be like, to be a woman, and to be so constantly confronted with the news of it, much less the fear of it. I can only have the slightest touch of understanding of what it is to be seen as what masculinity is entitled to, as opposed to being expected to uphold, enforce and embody it.

Over the course of the week after those stories broke, I wrestled with whether or not to write this piece, at all. The Wolf of Snow Hollow is, at its foundation, about the dysfunction of masculinity, from within masculinity. I kept tripping over the question of whether I wanted to write something, especially right now, that took the focus off of the way men victimize women.

As I weighed the different arguments about why I should or shouldn't, I was also browsing social media, reading news and other people's articles or essays, as is my habit. In response to those stories of horror being visited on women by men, there were what seems millions different versions of "Why are men?" being posted on every social media site I use, essays, blogs and news articles.

One of the strange things about gender is that it puts requirements on the ways we express ourselves, and always has. Feminism brought a broad awareness to this. If you accept the premise that the patriarchy exists, and I do, what does it exist to do? It seems to me, it exists to maintain the structures of power, because whether we like to admit it or not, that's what almost every human institution or systemic structure does. Even when it's not in their initial design, it's what they evolve into through time.

A structure and institution, even when it's erected and designed to serve people, must exist to be able to serve people, and in this, we find they use their power in defense of that existence, whether or not it serves the people it may have previously or claims to still serve. They inevitably end up using their power to ends that amount to maintaining or expanding that power, whether it serves anything other than the system or institution. Feminism, is essentially, a description of how the system of power preservation we call patriarchy operates. It's the name given the system of gender discrimination and exploitation entwined with and contributing to the preservation and maintenance of those institutions. As much as there is to admire about the intellectual achievement of feminism in its description of that system as a whole, the beauty of feminism is in the exposition and revelation of the humanity of the people we call women. Feminism, in interrogating those relationships with power, has largely answered the question, "Why are women?" in almost every conceivable way.

One of the most important things feminism has achieved in doing this, is to describe the way these relationships with power create maladaptive responses. In describing the insecurities and anxieties that arise from patriarchal gender roles, women have been able to give each other a wide range of options in how to respond to them, ranging from perspectives on how to maintain autonomy and a sense of self integrity in proximity to power to how to as thoroughly undermine it as possible, depending on that proximity. Part of feminism, and what I see as part of the beauty of the humanity it reveals, is that it says in many thousands of different ways, "This is how you get free."

Men have done very little interrogation of "Why are men?" and we've done very little interrogation of what our experience is within those gender norms and standards, the gender binary essentially. At least from my perspective, the majority of what I see being said or written about the experience within masculinity takes a lot of assumptions about some basis of fact in the gender binary and in the roles patriarchal masculinity assigns. There's very little from men, within masculinity, that approaches the experience from the standpoint that so candidly addresses these relationships with power, from within masculinity and its social norms and requirements.

"What if human beings are much closer to blank slates, and the biological essentialism of gender norms and roles is just not accurate? What if our evolutionary success isn't so deeply involved with the ways other species demonstrate strict gender roles, and it's more related to the fact we can adapt to conditions based on collective knowledge building, unrelated to biological sex?" These are questions feminists have asked, from within the experience of people society labels women, but men haven't done much investigation into them related to our experience with that label and the social expectations it carries.

This is why I decided to go forward with this piece on The Wolf of Snow Hollow. It's a perspective I think can be interesting and useful given our current social and political landscape. I'm convinced the film itself has a useful, important and incisive perspective on masculinity, but I'll leave it up to you, Dear Reader, to decide if my attempts to explore that are interesting or useful.

In the process of looking at the film from this perspective, my respect for it only grew. There's a subtle brilliance in its expansive contemplation and comment on masculinity (and gender more broadly), even as it gives the impression of being so simple and straightforward. I realized that if I were going to do both the film, and the responsibility of the intention I took up after the questions current events caused, it was going to have to be done in separate parts, and they should be posted/published separately.

I thought The Wolf of Snow Hollow was a great film from the first time I saw it. In the many times I've rewatched the film, even before attempt to write this, there were other, small pieces I also had great respect for, but it wasn't until sitting down and starting this version I came to understand just how subtly thorough this film is in its discussion of masculinity, it's portrait of John Marshall, and how simultaneously accurate, empathetic and honest it is. It is those things because it uses fiction to create an extreme situation as the catalyst to increase, and therefore expose, the pressures of life human beings are so accustomed to, we often don't notice them. John Marshall is an asshole. It never excuses him for his behavior. This is its most easily recognizable success as a film, and a piece of art. It does all of this, while being compelling, engaging and entertaining.

This will be the focus of Part 1. It will be about John Marshall, as a character, and the way his conception of and relationship to masculinity is such a driving factor in who he is, the conflicts he has throughout the film and his ultimate unraveling. That is available and has been published at the same time as this introduction.

The more subtle brilliance of the film though, is the way it places John on a spectrum, and within a context. The film never excuses John, yet it also treats him as a human being, whose environment and history weren't the results of his creation, but have shaped him, and are still trying to, to meet their needs. It accurately recognizes the realities for a human being who has yet to realize their environment has imparted to them something that has them at odds with themselves and it, when that environment presents no alternative ideas or model that would create that recognition. John Marshall is an asshole, the film never tries to excuse that, and yet he is also probably the best man in the film.

Part 2 of this series is going to focus on the way the film positions John on that spectrum, and within the context of Snow Hollow as the place that he lives and that raised him.

Finally, Part 3 will be about the way masculinity denies John the ability to even see better models of behavior. Some of the women in the film are demonstrating models of behavior that are more effective in achieving what John thinks he's trying to achieve. He can't see these models of behavior as viable, because they are not being demonstrated by men. It is, to my way of seeing it, a description of the way gender roles require the constriction, constraint and devaluing of our own humanity that costs men in every part of our lives. It renders us incapable of being able to find and experience the full expanse of our humanity, and therefore, denies us access to the full human experience and the beauty of what we can experience in relation to each other. It robs us in our relationships between each other as men, our relationships to women, and our relationships to anyone who defines themselves in a way that falls outside of or disrupts the gender binary and the gender roles it imposes. To my mind, this has been the most successful aspect of feminism's acceptance among the public, the revelation of that humanity, the ways patriarchy and its gender roles dehumanize all of us. Aside from the care taken in the craft of making the film, which is a related and somewhat separate topic, it's the success of The Wolf of Snow Hollow at putting masculinity under the microscope to expand that project of affirming and acknowledging humanity, that is the source of my respect for it. To put it bluntly, the fact that John sees himself as a man first, and a human being somewhere after, is ruining everything he tries to do, causing him nothing but anxiety and stress.

All of that being said, you can find Part 1, focused on John as an individual character, right now. It will be posted at the same time this introduction is. Part 2 will be posted the week following and Part 3 the week after that.

I hope, Dear Reader, you are able and willing to afford the time to consider this series, and that in some way serves you well. As always, thank you for reading.